The Chrestomanci Arc
by Ashura
Summary: Cleaning up after the Dark Lord is more complicated than re-ordering time out of joint. And years later, time and worlds collide and old friends and enemies find their roles can still change. And students are subjected to bad cake.
1. Prologue: The Second Little Death

The Second Little Death

by Ashura (arcadia@seishinryu.zzn.com)

disclaimer:  Harry Potter, Chrestomanci, and their respective worlds do not belong to me.  Pity.  Anyway this is done out of absolute adoration and flattery, that's all.

archive:  Arcadia (http://arcadia.envy.nu)

warnings: humour, followed by violence and death (of characters you already knew were going to die, though)

NOTES:

This is a fusion between J.K.  Rowling's _Harry Potter_ and Diana Wynne Jones _Chrestomanci_ series.  It's not necessary to have read DWJ to understand the story (I'll take care of explaining things), but if you haven't, you really, /really/ should.  Because they're fabulous...Harry Potter of 20 years ago, like.

I've got an intention (we'll see how it shapes up) of writing a longer fifth year fic and using this as a basis, so it's sort of a prequel, that way.  

Relative ages:  If we use Harry as the base (set at 0), the rest are as follows—

Rowena: +14

Philip, Gregory:  +17

Cressida, Lily, James, etc:  +20

Chrestomanci:  +45

Dumbledore:  ????

*****

When Rowena Chant was four years old, she threw Time all out of order.  It was an accident, of course, and fortunately it happened in controlled conditions, where it could be sorted out again without any really serious consequences, like the end of the world.  It was simple, really.  It was Tuesday, and Rowena's older brothers and sister had to go off to school, so she had nobody to play with.  Her father was busy doing Very Important Things, and her mother was off visiting relatives until the weekend.  She tried to get the housekeeper Igraine to play with her, but was told to run off and find something to occupy herself with.  Next she tried Beth the maid and Colin the gardener, but finally found herself sitting alone in the treehouse feeling miserable and lonely.

"I think it should be Saturday," she said.

And just like that, it was Saturday.  The world reeled as though it had been kicked, and trembled from the shock of suddenly losing four days at once.  Her father appeared immediately, from whatever Important Things he had been in the middle of, sounding rather cross.

"Rowena Chant!"  he called up at her.  She was trying to hide very deep in the treehouse.  "Put the days back where they belong right this instant!"

Rowena burst into tears, because she didn't know how.

"Just tell it to go back the way it was," he said, more gently this time, because he knew it was an accident.

Rowena sniffled.  "Go back to being Tuesday," she told the world.  There was another great rock and shift, and a sound like a thousand gears and wheels creaking heavily.

"Much better," said Papa, looking up at the treehouse with a rather odd look.  "Come down now, Ro, we need to have a talk.  And some tea."

An old man in wizard's robes and a tall pointy hat came huffing up to him then.  Rowena recognised him as a friend of her papa's, who sometimes brought her candy and silly little toys from someplace called Hogsmeade.  He had a funny name—Grumbly-door, she remembered, because it always made her think of the gargoyles standing guard at the castle gates.  Much funnier than Chant.  "I say, Charles, what on earth happened there?"

"I'm just about to find that out myself," Papa said mildly.  He was always at his most mild and vague when he was very worried, or thinking very hard.  "I said come down, Rowena."

Still sniffling, she made herself stop crying, because it was hard to climb and cry at the same time. As soon as she reached the ground, she wrapped herself around Papa's leg.  "I didn't mean to."

"Of course you didn't."  He reached down and gathered her up, and started to carry her back to the house.  "Nobody thinks you did.  But it was very dangerous, all the same, so I need you to tell me exactly what you did before it happened."

She felt considerably safer, snuggled into his arms, and less likely to cry again.  "I just said that I thought it should be Saturday," she mumbled into his shirt collar.  "Because I had nobody to play with."

"Ah," Papa acknowledged, gently rubbing her back.  "Well I want you to be very careful about how you say things from now on, because if you tell things to happen, I have a feeling they are going to.  And while you're being careful, I think we'd better start you on wizardry lessons."

"Really?"  That was even better than school!  Rowena was not sure why she was being rewarded for setting time wrong, but she decided not to correct them.  She was too young to understand the adult point of view, that it was far safer to start teaching magic early than to let her wander around making things happen without supervision.  

She let her eyes droop shut and her head loll against Papa's shoulder.  Mr. Grumbly-door was chuckling into his long grey beard.  "So she's the one, then?  Yes, there are nine, aren't there, I can see them now.  Very convenient, Charles, I must say.  A bit young for an enchanter.  I admit I wish it'd taken a bit longer to come out."

"So do I," said Papa, "and not just because I'm going to have to start scheduling lessons for her, and trying to keep her paying attention.  "I've got three other children, remember, and Cressida won't even start at Hogwart's for another year—how am I supposed to explain to the rest of them that Rowena gets to learn magic before they do?"

Much of what they were talking about, then and after, did not make very much sense to the suddenly very sleepy Rowena.  She hadn't been tired before, but perhaps sending Time out of joint and then putting it back took a lot of energy.  But that part, about learning something as grand and important as magic before her sister or brothers did—that she cherished, and cuddled the thought as if it were a very warm and cosy blanket.  

The scene that evening was every bit as bad as Papa had predicted it would be.  Cressida, as the oldest and the only one yet to reach an age that included two digits, was furious to be denied her rightful place as the first Chant child of this generation to learn magic.  The twins, Gregory and Philip—who were seven, and as beastly as it was possible for little boys to be—threw a screaming fit that made the ghosts in the attic float downstairs to see who was being tortured, and if they'd be allowed to help.  They were quite disappointed to find it was only the children.  In the end, Papa had to agree to find a tutor for all four of them to learn magic at once.

That was how Mr. Pinns was introduced into the family.  He was their magic tutor; a frail and nervous wisp of a man with a soft, mild voice who was always looking over his shoulder.  He was very patient with Rowena, however, and gave her lollipops when she caught on to something exceptionally well.  He was not so patient with Philip and Gregory, but they were inclined to go about using magic for inconvenient pranks whenever they could get away with it—summoning the butter dish while they knew Papa and Mama were having tea with Important Guests, or charming the big Turkey carpet in the study to make it fly.  He was also patient with Cressida, which was a bit of a miracle really, because Cressida had heard somewhere that it was fashionable to have romantic fixations on one's teachers, and she followed him around with big blue doe-eyes and sighed dreamily whenever he looked at her.

Mr. Pinns, being an altogether sensible gentleman with no romantic interest whatsoever in ten-year-old students, thought it best to just ignore the behaviour until it went away, or at least until Cressida was shipped off to Hogwart's and met boys her own age.

That came soon enough, and the following Autumn Cressida was hugging her sister and brothers goodbye, dressed smartly in black school robes with her things packed in a trunk; Mama had taken her shopping in Diagon Alley and let her pick them out, along with a wand and a very pretty white owl.  

"Be good love," she whispered to Rowena when she hugged her.  "Be careful, and don't let anything happen to you!"

Rowena thought it grossly unfair that the girls would now be outnumbered at Chrestomanci Castle by two to one.  Besides that she didn't mind much that Cressida was leaving, because Mr. Pinns gave her a chocolate frog for being so good about it, and not crying.

They got letters back from Cressida quite regularly by owl.  She was having a grand time at Hogwart's, and told of her adventures in great detail, even though Philip and Gregory and Rowena did not know what she was talking about most of the time.  She told them she'd been sorted into a house called Gryffindor ("Gryphons?" Philip asked, puzzled.  "Does she mean those lion-eagle things?  I didn't think they lived in houses"), and was taking classes like Potions and Transfiguration and Arithmancy.  She was ahead of most of her class, but that was to be expected, because she'd been learning longer.  She'd made friends with a girl named Lily Evans, who became the most prominent figure in her letters for the next several years.

Eventually Philip and Gregory went to Hogwart's too.  Mr. Pinns gave her another chocolate frog, and they had a wild romp through the garden trying to catch it.  Rowena was half tempted to let it get away, but decided in the end that if one put up that much of a fight trying to get something, then one deserved to eat it.  She had lessons all to herself now, and though it was more lonely without the twins making rude remarks or funny spells, she found she was learning a lot more, too.  She had never gone to a regular school like the others; Mr. Pinns taught her math and history and writing just as he did magic.  She was not ever sure when this decision had been made, but she didn't mind it.  She knew that she'd be going eventually, to Hogwart's like everyone else, and in the meantime who needed a silly village school with pointy-faced teachers and noisy children who threw things and tormented each other?  It didn't occur to her that other children, normal children, might be afraid of her.  After all, she hadn't done anything really dangerous or awful since accidentally making it Saturday.  And she certainly wasn't going to do anything like that again!

When her letter finally came—she was almost eleven—Rowena realised she was much more sad than she had expected.  With the final Chant child leaving for Hogwart's, Mr. Pinns would have to move on and find some other children to teach magic to, and she would miss him.  She would miss the castle, with its crotchety old ghosts and sneaky mirrors, the treehouse that was just in the right place for picking chestnuts; she would miss Igraine and Beth and Colin, and Mama and Papa.  But it was an adventure, too, she could feel that in her blood, and besides, Mr. Pinns came along with her and Mama to Diagon Alley, so he wasn't gone /yet/.

They bought books and robes, neither of which interested her too much.  The books were mostly newer versions of things she had already read, the robes were simply not very interesting.  

"_Standard Book of Spells, Grade One_?"  she read incredulously, holding up the spine for her mother and tutor to see.  "Come off—how to make a feather float in the air?  I did that when I was four!"

"Then you should be very good at it when they ask you to do it," Mr. Pinns said mildly.

"Ro, love," Mama explained, "most of the other children haven't had tutors, you know.  For some of them this will be their first time learning magic.  You might need to help them out some."  She did not mention that most would just be witches or wizards, and not enchanters.  Rowena nodded seriously.  She was well aware by this point that learning magic as early as she and her siblings had was highly irregular.  She knew that it was because she had nine lives, and most people didn't, and that meant more raw magical power, and that she was going to be the next Chrestomanci—whether she liked it or not, so it was just as well that she didn't mind.

They went on shopping, getting the rest of her school things.  She had never used—or felt the need for—a wand before, but she found one that seemed to like her all right.  It was long and swishy, made of holly and a whisker from an Asheth Temple cat.  Mr. Ollivander, who sold the wands, said he'd had a feeling about that one.  

They didn't buy her an owl, because Cressida already had one, and there was no reason all four Chant children couldn't manage to share, or send their letters at the same time.  Just before the twins had gone, they had asked how come they couldn't send things by regular post, the way they did at home. 

"Post doesn't go to Hogwart's," Papa had explained.  "It's in a little pocket world of its own, you see, and you have to be some sort of wizard to even see it."

Philip and Gregory and Rowena had all nodded.  They understood about worlds.  There were hundreds of them, though some ignorant people tried to say there were only twelve.  The worlds each started out as one, but when a major event occurred, like a very big battle, they would split apart, to allow for both possibilities to happen.  So in one world Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo, and everybody spoke French except in India; in another, America was actually called Atlantis, and in another the Titanic had missed the iceberg entirely; and in another, there was no magic at all and people didn't ever grow up to be wizards or witches.  (They were all quite grateful not to have been born in that world.)  There had once been two worlds that had not split apart all the way when they should have, and very strong magic had to be employed to meld them back together.  Almost everyone had other versions of themselves living in all the other worlds, living out all the possible different lives that they could have had.  The exceptions were very, very rare—people like Rowena, and Papa, didn't have any other versions of themselves.  For some reason or other, no counterparts managed to be born, and the lives they would have lived all concentrated together in the one version that did.  They had nine lives, and were always enchanter-level wizards.  Papa had said once, offhand-like, that people with extra lives seemed to be invariably more careless with them than most people.

You had to be a very powerful enchanter to get between the worlds.  The gate was in a garden in back of the castle, and it led to a place called World Edge, or, if you weren't being formal, the Place Between.  The children were absolutely not allowed to go there, ever.  Rowena had stumbled into the Place Between by accident once, in her sleep, when she was having a particularly strange dream.  She knew it looked like a rocky sort of valley, with a lot of doors in it that you could walk through.  She did not walk through any of them, but she'd seen the thin membrane of spell-fabric that covered them, and that separated the worlds from each other.  So it made sense, when Papa explained about Hogwart's being in a pocket world of its own.

It was a bit disconcerting, when she got there, to find that electricity didn't work in the pocket-world:  lights, watches, cameras; there were no televisions or computers or telephones at all.  Rowena thought it strange, but when she mentioned it to the girl walking next to her into the Great Hall, the only response was a quizzical look and, "What?  Aren't those Muggle things, anyway?  Who'd want to use /them/?"

"Well I would rather like to know what time it is," Rowena returned petulantly.  She had never heard the term 'Muggle' before, but she was clever, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what it meant.

A tall, imposing woman, even more imposing than Igraine the housekeeper, called off each of the students' names, and one by one they had to go sit on a stool and put a worn out old hat on their head.  The hat would call out of the name of a house, and that was where they would live for the rest of their years at Hogwart's.  That cleared up what Cressida had been talking about, anyway.  Philip and Gregory had gone to Gryffindor as well.  Rowena crossed her fingers that she would end up there with them.

She didn't have to wait long—it was fortunate sometimes, having a last name so near the front of the alphabet.  As soon as she heard "Chant!" she marched up to the front of the hall, picked up the weatherbeaten old hat, and plopped it onto her head.

It waited barely a second.  "RAVENCLAW!" it called.  She saw people in blue scarves cheering on one side of the room, and her brothers making disappointed gestures on the other.  She felt a sudden, profound loss, and it almost doubled her over—she really wasn't going back to them.  It hurt.

For a moment it felt like the hat was going to apologise and take back what it had said.  She felt it pondering, and she knew that with the tiniest nudge, she could be a Gryffindor, too.  But it wouldn't be right, and the hat probably knew what it was about, anyway.  If it said she'd make a good Ravenclaw, well then, so she would.  She wasn't going to lose her whole family over a stupid house cup.  //_It's all right_,// she told the hat, and took it off again, and waved to Philip and Gregory as she marched over to join her housemates.

It turned out to be a good choice, in the end.  People were sorted into Ravenclaw because they were clever and liked to learn things, which suited Rowena quite well.  Each House had something its people were good at.  Hufflepuffs (she liked them, but thought it a hopelessly unfortunate name) were loyal and devoted.  Slytherins were crafty and cunning, though not so cunning as Ravenclaws, who learned things just for the sake of knowing them.  The Gryffindors were a flashy bunch, and she liked them well enough, though she did get a little tired of girls mooning over how handsome her brothers were.  They were only handsome from a distance, and once one got up close to them, they were as beastly as ever.  Cressida was very popular as well, but she had gotten nicer over the years instead of nastier, so sometimes she didn't mind if Rowena tagged along with her and her friends.

This pleased Rowena especially, because she had quite a hopeless crush on one of Cressida's friends.

There was a whole group of them, and they would have picnics on the grass, and sit together for Quidditch games.  Cressida and Lily were still best friends, and somewhere along the line Lily had taken up with a boy named James Potter, which meant that they now invited /his/ friends too:  Remus and Peter and Sirius.  It was Sirius that Rowena was in love with, and had been since the first time Cress had brought the group home for a party once, between terms.  The twins were being their usual horrid selves, and none of Rowena's friends had been able to come.  Sirius was the only one of Cressida's friends who didn't try to pretend she wasn't there, so as not to have to deal with her.  It got better, once she was in Hogwart's herself and had things to talk to them about.  They knew she was smart, and good at magic, and they paid attention to her.  But the tall boy with dark, puppy-ish eyes had done it first, which in Rowena was enough to inspire total devotion.

Not that she would ever have let on, of course, or that she expected he would ever return it.  She had a wonderful daydream, one winter, in which he asked her to the Yule Ball—but at the time, he was seventeen and she was eleven, and she knew things did not really work that way.  So she wasn't terribly upset when he went with a sixth-year girl named Evangeline Pilgrim instead.

Once they graduated, they stuck together, and still came over for holidays, or everyone would meet in Hogsmeade for a bit of eating and shopping and mischief-making.  (The boys especially were great at mischief.  Philip and Gregory fairly idolised them.)  Lily Evans got married to James Potter (with Cressida as the maid of honour and Sirius as the best man), and they had a big summer wedding in the castle gardens, because it was the only really good place anybody could think of where wizarding types and Muggles could both get to and enjoy themselves easily.  The only embarrassing moment was when Peter Pettigrew tried to sneak off with some of the centrepieces, and they started screaming "_I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!_" as soon as he got outside the reception area.  But it was just a prank, and cleared up quickly, and everyone had a good laugh.

While all this was going on—not the wedding itself, but life and Hogwarts and mischief—there was a powerful enchanter from Slytherin House, named Voldemort, who turned to the Dark Arts and went around killing people.  Sometimes he did worse things than kill them, things that nobody was supposed to talk about.  This made Professor Dumbledore and all the Ministry of Magic very busy and troubled.  It made Papa troubled too, and should have made him busy—but it didn't, because there was a problem nobody in the Ministry had bothered to fix.

Papa's real name was Charles Chant.  His title was Chrestomanci.  It was an old, respected title, and nobody would ever dream otherwise.  It used to be that whoever was Chrestomanci was responsible for making sure Dark wizards and witches didn't take over any of the multiple worlds, that they didn't go around taking advantage of Muggles, and generally regulating the use of magic in the multiverse.  This was why Chrestomanci had to be an enchanter with nine lives—they had more power than most people, even other enchanters, and regulating magic in a hundred or more worlds was a very tiring job.

But this world had formed the Ministry of Magic, and made a lot of rules and regulations of its own, and told Chrestomanci (long before Charles' day) that they could take care of themselves just fine, and he ought to concentrate on the rest of those worlds and just use this one for a rest.  Chrestomanci, at the time, had not seemed to mind.  He made a promise—a Wizard's Oath—to stay out of the affairs of this particular world unless he was asked by a particular method to help, in which case he said he would always be willing to.  It was his job, after all.  

It would have been a good time for the Ministry to remember this, and ask for Papa's help.  It was /exactly/ what he was there for, and a nine-lived enchanter would be very, very helpful against Voldemort and his Death-Eaters.  Unfortunately, the Ministry apparently did not remember the bit about the Oath.  So they did not ask Papa, and he was unable to help them directly.  He tried—he send messages to Professor Dumbledore about what they ought to do, and how to protect themselves.  He made subtle suggestions to Rowena for charms she could do to strengthen the defenses at Hogwart's and books she could find ideas in.  Mostly he made absolutely sure that Voldemort could not ever reach the Place Between.

"Oh, why don't they just /ask/ him?"  Cressida grumbled one summer afternoon, tossing herself into a great crimson armchair in one of the parlours.  "They've probably forgotten how, great blazing idiots.  It's not that hard of a spell."

"If they have forgotten," said Rowena, "that's probably why.  Too simple.  They're used to having to fill out forms and requisitions and things."  

It /was/ an astonishingly simple spell.  You simply said 'Chrestomanci' three times, and no matter what world you were in, he would be instantly called away to you.  The fact that the Ministry of Magic could not seem to manage the ridiculously easy task of repeating a man's name did not impress the Chant girls much at all.

"Oh, let's not deal with it anyway," Cressida said, jumping to her feet again.  "Let's go down to Hogsmeade, Ro, and find presents for Lily and James.  They're having a baby, we need to get them something nice."

"All right," Rowena agreed.  Hogsmeade was fun, and the fact that Cress was inviting her somewhere gave her a little thrill.  She wondered if there would ever be a point when the six years that stretched between them would not seem as big as it did now that she was fourteen and Cress was twenty, when the age difference wouldn't matter so much.

When they were all grown up, she supposed.

Cressida asked Mama for the car, and they got themselves to the village.  Most wizards didn't have cars—they Apparated, or traveled by fireplace, or used broomsticks.  Philip and Gregory were quite keen on broomsticks, because they were also keen on Quidditch.  Cressida and Rowena agreed that brooms were fun the way horses were fun, you rode them, and you did tricks and enjoyed yourself, but they weren't really /transportation/.  All four did race around the gardens sometimes.  Gregory usually won, if they were just going for speed.  Philip was a Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and could do all sorts of wonderful maneuvers in the air—James had taught him most of them, because he'd been the Seeker all the way up until he graduated.  Rowena was more interested in figuring out how to do spells and complicated things while riding.  Cressida was somewhere in between them all.

They spent a pleasant afternoon looking for baby things for the Potters.  Cressida found a blanket that would snuggle around a child and make sure it didn't fall out of its crib.  Rowena thought it might rather have something to play with, and bought a teddy bear that could mimic the parents' voices, so it could soothe a crying infant back to sleep without the mum and dad having to get out of bed.  They bought some gingerbread men for themselves, and when they'd finally wrestled the little creatures to the counter and eaten them, they were feeling quite pleased with themselves.

"Well well, it's both the Miss Chants.  Afternoon, Cressida, Rowena.  And you've got gingerbread on your face."  The voice could not decide whether to be friendly or nasty.  Neither could the person it belong to.  There was Lucius Malfoy walking with Severus Snape.  Malfoy was used to being nasty to people, but he was always polite to the Chants.  He respected old wizard families with lots of power and money, and he respected Chrestomanci and his family as having all these things.  He had also been in love with Cressida for most of their school years.

"Hello, Cressida.  Cat," said Snape.  He always called Rowena 'Cat,' with a little curl of his lips as if it were an insult.  It was because she had nine lives.  He didn't understand that she didn't mind being called it at all.  Her great-great-grandfather had been called Cat (though his real name was Eric) for the same reason, and he was one of the greatest Chrestomancis in history.  But she knew that while Snape didn't necessarily /mind/ her, he didn't like her enough that he would keep calling her Cat if she told him she preferred it, so she kept that to herself.

She did wipe the crumbs off her face with her sleeve, though.

"Out shopping?" Lucius Malfoy asked innocently.

Cressida nodded, holding up her bags.  "Baby presents for Lily and James."

Malfoy nodded, acknowledging.  He had something he desperately wanted to say; Rowena could see it trying to burst out of his lips while he was trying to find just the right way to let whatever it was out.

"How about you?"  Cressida asked politely.  "Just wandering?"

That was a good enough opportunity for Malfoy, apparently.  "Oh, just spending some time with the fellows, before it all has to stop.  I'm getting married, you know."

"Really?" asked Cressida, and there was a little note of relief in her voice.  "Congratulations."

Malfoy nodded again.  "Do you know Narcissa?  We're getting married next week."

Cressida paused, as if she wanted to point something out, but wasn't sure it was polite.  She did it anyway.  "She's your cousin, isn't she?"

Malfoy's eyes narrowed.  "That hardly matters...it happens once or twice in /all/ the old families, I'm told."  

Cressida just nodded.  It had happened once or twice in the Chant family as well.  "Well, congratulations.  I'm sure you'll be happy."  She sounded so sincere that Malfoy actually looked surprised, and he thrust his hand toward her awkwardly.

"Well, thanks."

They shook hands, and then they all stood there looking at each other awkwardly before Cressida jumped up and said, "It's later than I thought!  We have to get the car back so Arnold can wash it—" and dragged Rowena off, everyone looking relieved that the conversation was over.

"Imagine!"  Cress snorted as they climbed into the car.  "You know what he's at, don't you, marrying his cousin like that."

"Of course," said Rowena.  She was a Ravenclaw and a Chant after all, she knew a lot of things.  "Cousins having children doubles the chances the children will be enchanters.  Especially in old magic families like Malfoys."  And Chants.  Great-great-grandfather Cat's parents had been cousins, too.

"Hmph.  He's hoping for more than that, I'll bet you.  He wants their baby to have nine lives, too...he'd love to have the next Chrestomanci in his family."  Cressida sounded more and more like she simply did not approve of Malfoys.

Rowena shrugged.  "But it won't matter, will it?  There are never that many nine-lived enchanters in one world at the same time.  He can try as hard as he wants, and it won't make any difference.  Besides," she added, her face breaking into a wicked grin, "that's my job, and I'm certainly not going to give it up to some squawling stupid messy baby, even if it /did/ come out with nine lives somehow."

Cressida laughed, and drove them back home, where they spent until dinner finding fun things to wrap the presents in.  

They eventually gave the presents to Lily and James, who even more eventually had a baby named Harry.  Voldemort and his Death-Eaters continued killing Muggles and wizards and anybody else they felt like killing.  The Ministry still had not remembered to summon Chrestomanci.

Then Voldemort made his final move.

Everyone with so much as a sliver of witch-sense knew it was happening.  The ghosts knew.  The gardens knew.  The cats knew.  Rowena wondered if it was too late to write "Say this three times:  KRES-TOH-MAN-SEE" on a piece of paper and conjure it up in front of one of the Ministers of Magic, when Cressida burst into her room, waving a letter wildly in her hand.

"Ro!  He's gone after Lily and James, help me find them!"

"What?"  She was more than willing to help, if Cress would explain very quickly what was going on.  And Cress did.  Lily and James had gone into hiding, and used a Fidelius charm to keep their location a secret—which made it a secret from everyone, including Cressida.

"But he's going to find them—I was playing Patience with the divining cards, just to keep my mind off things—I have to get to them first so I can help!"  She slapped the paper down onto Rowena's desk.  It was a thank-you note for the baby presents, to which Lily and James had each carefully signed their names.  "/I/ can't sneak past it—normal people can't, even enchanters, that's the point of the whole thing.  But you or Dad could I think, only /he/ can't because he's still sworn not to get involved unless they ask him—you're not though, because you're not Chrestomanci yet, so here's their signatures, FIND THEM!"

Rowena set her hand down purposefully on top of the signatures.  Under regular circumstances it would have been an easy matter to locate anyone this way, but the Fidelius charm lay like a thick wool blanket over them, protecting.  //_A wool blanket, hm?  I can get around that._//  Rowena narrowed herself to a point, like a tiny magical invisible needle, and got to work as fast as she could, unraveling a little hole in it.  //_Just for me,_// she told it firmly.  //_Nobody else can use this, not even on this exact same letter—just me._//  It would not do any good for her to reveal the Potters' hiding place to the wrong people before she even found it herself.

And finally she did.  They were hiding in their house.  She did a very quick patch job on the hole in the charm, and stood up from the desk.  "All right then," she said.  "I've found them, I'm going."

"/You're/ going?"  Cressida repeated.  "You bloody well are not, you're staying right here.  I said find them and tell /me/--"

"Well I'm not telling you," Rowena answered crossly, "because you'll follow me.  Look, if they're in as much danger as you say, then I should go—I should anyway, because just like you said, Papa can't, so I'm the only nine-lived enchanter left in the world.  I can spare one or two fighting him, and you can't."

It wasn't that she wanted to go fight Voldemort, or that she was really as free with her lives as she made it sound.  She would, if she really felt in her heart that she had a choice, barricade herself in her room in the well-defended Chrestomanci Castle and wait til it was all over.  But she couldn't.  It was something she /knew/, very deep inside herself, that it was going to be her job for the rest of all her lives to protect people from Dark Wizards, and even if she was only fourteen, it seemed she was being called to duty a little ahead of schedule.

"All right," Cressida said after a moment.  "I hate to admit it and let you go put yourself in danger, but you're right.  Go on then."  Her lips were tight and tense, and there were lines around her eyes.  She was very, very worried.  Rowena pulled on a sweater and conjured her broomstick right into her hand.  She threw one blue-jeaned leg over, and pushed off from the ground, and went soaring out the window.

It was dark, almost too dark to see where she was going once she got off the castle grounds and left the garden lamps behind.  A light spell was pointless, since in order to make it bright enough to actually see far enough ahead to navigate, she may as well paint a big glowing sign on her back:  "SHOOT HERE."  

Her fingers curled around the broomstick handle.  She told it that it was a very clever broom, and would not run into anything or get lost.  The broom, eager to show off its new intelligence, zipped off even faster into the darkness.  Rowena hung on tighter.  It was cold, this high, and the wind in her face made her eyes dry out.

She did not find Lily and James Potter before Voldemort did.  She did, however, find them before anybody had been killed, though the Dark Wizard, it seemed, was just about to blast a very large hole in the front door.  Rowena and her broom flew careening downward toward him.  She was suddenly very, very afraid.  What had seemed, an hour ago, to be not only noble but necessary, now appeared rash and foolish—but still necessary, and that steel part inside that said she /had/ to do it had not weakened at all.  She hooked her leg around her broom so she wouldn't fall off even if she lost her balance, and pulled her wand out of her sleeve.

She leveled it carefully at Voldemort, who wasn't looking at her, and murmured a word.  Light flashed out of the tip of the wand with a noise like a great growling tiger and slammed into the Dark Wizard from behind.  He toppled, lost his balance, started to fall—but he was up again a second later, and firm on his feet, and now his attention was focused on the dark-haired girl on her broomstick instead of the Potters' front door.

"Children, now," he muttered.  "Go away, run back to your mother before you get hurt."  He waved his hand, and Rowena's wand broke with a loud *snap*.  Little blue-white sparks spattered and sizzled out of the broken place.

Rowena felt anger rising in her chest.  Ever since she was four years old, people had taken her seriously—or at least her power, even if they weren't always sure her mind had caught up to it yet.  She did not like the way the Most Evil Enchanter Ever turned his back on her as if he wasn't worried.  He /should/ be worried.

She  let the wand drop to the ground.  She didn't need it anyway, wands were something they taught you to use at Hogwart's because it helped you to focus, and added something to your power.  She didn't need focus, and her raw power was quite formidable when it wasn't being channeled through a small rod of holly.

//_You are not going through that door,_// she told Voldemort silently.  He waved his wand at it, irritated that something seemed to be blocking his breaking it down.  //_You will not go through that door and you won't kill anybody else_.//  She didn't put the rest of it into words, just gathered all the magic that was flooding through her into a great ball and launched it at him, out of her hands.  It knocked him down this time; he fell with a clatter and a great loud whine against the wall of the Potters' house.  His hands came up to his head, and he was without his wand for a moment.  

"Brat!"  He screeched.  It seemed to hurt his throat to say.  He shook his hands at her—he didn't need a wand either, but the effect was opposite—where her power was stronger without being channeled, his was weaker without the amplifier.  Rowena ducked from the bolt of energy aimed at her chest, and lost her balance.  She was hanging upside down by her leg on her broomstick now, and it was an entirely odd angle to be watching from.  Voldemort looked smaller, upside down.  He was going for his wand.  He thought he'd bought himself time, that she would have to climb back up and sit properly before attacking him again.  She didn't.  Another great burst of magic—shot out of her mouth this time, because she was holding on to her broomstick handle.  It didn't matter where it came from.  It slammed into Voldemort just as he retrieved his wand, and he crashed against the house again.  She could see he was weaker; it was in the way his image shifted before her eyes as if he were made of water.  She felt triumph rising in her throat, magic coursing through her body.  He was weaker, but she was not.  She could keep on throwing magic at him, again and again, until he stopped moving entirely or somebody showed up to help her out.  

He didn't get up this time, but remained crouched against the side of the house, on top of Lily's crushed bed of pansies.  He was still moving, so Rowena knew he wasn't dead, but she took the moment to clamber back upright on top of her broomstick.  The blood was rushing to her head and she was getting dizzy, upside-down.

When she looked at him again, he had his wand pointed at her, and was mouthing two very evil sounding words.

"_Avada kedarva._"

There was never a counterspell for the Killing Curse, or any way to shield from it. It hit Rowena in the side of her neck. 

She thought it would hurt more, dying.  It didn't.  She saw it coming at her, had time to almost finish a thought of //_well I weakened him at least now Lily can fini--_// and then she just /wasn't/, anymore.  Wasn't conscious, wasn't moving, wasn't breathing, wasn't alive.  Her fingers lost their grip on the broom handle and she toppled backward, then her body fell to a crumpled heap on the ground twenty feet below.

Eventually, she woke up.  It was still dark, and the whole place smelled like blood.  Something very tall and bulky was standing nearby, making shadows loom where it should have been too dark even for shadows.  Rowena stood up, very slowly.  She was sore.

The bulky thing turned, and she very nearly shot magic at it, but realised in time to stop herself that it was only Hagrid.  He was holding something very very small in his arms.

"What—who is it?"  He sounded angry, and very ready to kill her if she ended up being the wrong person.

"_Lumos,_" she murmured, and the place lit up even though she didn't have her wand.

"Student?" Hagrid sounded confused, until he got a better look at her when she moved closer to retrieve her wand. It was in one piece again.  Perhaps a wand with a whisker from an Asheth Temple cat had nine lives, too.  A low rumble of acknowledgement came from his chest.  "Rowena Chant.  Might've known.  You all right then?"

She nodded, and slid the wand back into her sleeve, and patted herself over.  For having fallen off a flying broomstick and being hit with the Killing Curse, one might say she was doing remarkably well.  "Fine.  I've never died before," she admitted.  "Is it all over, then?"

Hagrid nodded.

A broad smile broke across Rowena's face.  "Oh, good!  I couldn't finish him off, in the end, but I did knock him down a few times—thought that would be enough for James and Lily to take care of the rest on their own—"  Something in his face stopped her, though, and she took a closer look—with which-sight, of course—at the blood covering the place.  

She got very, very quiet for a moment.  "They're dead though, aren't they?"

Hagrid nodded again.  She took a closer look at the thing in his arms, too, and realised it was the Potters' baby.  /He/ wasn't dead, at least.

"That's Harry, isn't it?"  Another nod.  "Can I...?"  She began pleadingly, and after scowling for a moment, he nodded and passed the baby into her arms.

Harry Potter was not a happy looking baby at that moment, but then she supposed that was to be expected.  His face was scrunched up as if he really wanted to cry but couldn't remember how.  He had wispy dark hair sticking out of his head.  And right in the middle of his forehead, he had a lightning-bolt shaped mark.

"Don't know what happened," Hagrid explained with a long tired breath.  "He got James, and then Lily, but when he tried to put the curse on the boy, it turned right back on him and hit him good."

Rowena stifled a moment of very uncharitable jealousy that this tiny creature had been able to defeat Voldemort and she hadn't.  She discarded it immediately, ashamed to have had it at all—but checked very quickly and carefully, just in case, to make sure he only had one life.  He did.

He was, however, most definitely a powerful enchanter.

"Special kid," she said softly, brushing little Harry's hair closer to his head.  As soon as she said it, it came flooding over her that 'special' was not going to be nearly enough to make up for everything that had, and would, happen to this baby.  And as strong as that was the realisation that Lily and James were dead.  Her sister's best friends were dead.  

She might have helped, weakening Voldemort the way she did.  But she'd failed Cressida completely, in the end.

She handed Harry back to Hagrid.  "I have to go home," she said.  He didn't say anything, and she climbed back on her broomstick.  It was still clever enough to find its way home—apparently her dying hadn't broken that, anyway.  She didn't try to sneak in, just went through the front door.  Papa and Mama were there looking worried and desperate and sad and a little proud.  Cressida was there looking hopeful.

"Ro—"  It was a question, even if it wasn't more than a syllable.

She shook her head.  "Eight, now," she said.  "And baby Harry's still alive.  He's the one who got Voldemort in the end."

Cressida understood, but needed to make sure.  "Lily...?"

Rowena shook her head again.  Cressida threw both arms around her, and slumped to the floor, and burst into tears.

***

In the end, Rowena decided people didn't take her seriously enough after all.  They certain didn't listen to her.

She said that the Chants ought to take in baby Harry, since he didn't have any other wizarding relatives, but Dumbledore was determined to send him to his Muggle aunt and uncle.  Cressida and Rowena had nothing against Muggles, but they'd heard awful things about Vernon and Petunia Dursley from Lily, and didn't think Harry ought to have to live there.  He went anyway.

She said that Sirius Black hadn't betrayed James and Lily Potter.  She /knew/, deep down in the bottom of her gut, the same way she knew when she was ten that she was in love with him.  Nobody believed her.  They had evidence, they said, and they didn't consider the way she said she /knew/ to be evidence.

They knew it was traumatising, they said.  They were sorry she had to go through all this, and that she'd died.  They sent Sirius to Azkaban anyway.  They did say they were sorry they hadn't remembered how to call Chrestomanci sooner, but that was in quiet embarrassed voices.  Cressida was not ready to forgive them yet.  She believed Rowena, though that might have been just because she wanted to, because Peter had disappeared and James and Lily were dead and she was losing all her friends at once.

//_I know you didn't do it_,// she told Sirius, when they were walking him away.  He glanced up at her, as if he'd heard.  She didn't get a chance to make sure, because Severus Snape stood up at that point, and his great tall body was blocking her line of vision.  He looked down at her, and took in her stricken glare, and actually looked sympathetic for a moment as he put a hand on her shoulder before he walked away.

"I know it's not easy on you."  Dumbledore was sitting in front of her, and he'd turned around to pin her to her seat with his eyes.  He really was sympathetic, even though he didn't believe her /knowing/ either.  "It's been very trying, very trying for everybody.  But it's over now, and it really is for the best."

It wasn't over, and they both knew it.  He was trying to make it seem like this was as easy to fix and put behind as re-ordering a few days out of the week.  It wasn't.  She turned around without saying anything and watched as they finished dragging Sirius away, even though he hadn't done it, and not taking her seriously, just like Voldemort.

It was not the same kind of death as the first one.  It didn't cost a real life, in the physical sense that the first one did.

But it hurt so very much more.

[fin.]


	2. Extra Credit, part i.

Chrestomanci Arc 01:  Extra Credit, part i.__

by Ashura

archive:  Arcadia (http://arcadia.envy.nu)

disclaimer:  the worlds and characters of Harry Potter and Chrestomanci do not belong to me (though some of the original ones do).  I'm just borrowing them to play with, and I'll put them back when I'm through.

warnings:  none

notes:  AU, crossover.  This is mostly setup, so if it's not all that exciting, that's how first chapters are sometimes.

****

It was a glorious, glorious day.

To any normal person, it was a day that would not have looked particularly extraordinary.  Grey clouds hovered dismally in the air, took dark and wet to be fluffy, and while it was not raining exactly, they would occasionally let a drop or two fall on an unsuspecting passer-by, who would declare in surprise, "Was that rain?  And here I left my umbrella!" and start looking for shelter before realising that the clouds were just having a bit of a joke.

The wetness hung in the air, too, heavy and humid.  It was the sort of damp chill that soaked into the body no matter how warm one's clothes were, an uncomfortable, listless cold.  And yet Harry Potter greeted this overcast, dreary day with an enthusiasm most people reserve for Christmas morning.

He woke up at dawn, even though he hadn't been able to fall asleep til well after midnight.  By seven, he had packed almost everything he owned into a damp cardboard box, wrapped his Firebolt broomstick carefully in rags, and was waiting impatiently with his owl-cage perched on his lap.  The rest of the house remained stiflingly silent.

He pulled out _Creative Quidditch Strategy_ from the box and tried to read.  It had been a fifteenth birthday present from Ron, and he had already read the entire book twice through, plus scribbled notes in the margins and memorised the diagrams.  It was still a good book the third time, but some of the novelty had worn off.

Finally, at half-past eight, the stirrings of other members of the household began.  At ten minutes to nine, the teakettle began to whistle.  And fifteen minutes after that, Uncle Vernon's loud bray bellowed through the upstairs hallway:

"BOY!  GET DOWN HERE!"

There was a good deal more, mostly about how ungrateful Harry was that his relations were going out of their way to drive him into London and how it was horribly inconsiderate of him to expect them to conform to _his_ schedule when they had their own, never mind the fact they were actually thrilled to be getting rid of Harry for the length of the school year, and had never once entertained the notion of doing _anything_ by according to his schedule.  The truth was that he was under strict orders to stay in his room unless his presence was specifically demanded, and as they frequently neglected to do so at mealtimes, he probably would have starved to death over the summer had Ron not been sending him twice-weekly care packages full of snacks.  The Weasleys would cheerfully have had him the entire summer, but it was Expressly Forbidden by Those In Charge for Harry to spend his holidays anywhere but Hogwart's or the Dursleys, so Mrs. Weasley made herself feel better about his welfare by making sure he was well fed.

Well fed, however, was still not enough for Harry to grow into his clothes, which were all handed down from his whalish cousin Dudley.  Three Harrys could have fit into his jeans, cinched as tight as he could get them with a belt that was near worn through, and the cuffs were rolled up several times to keep them from dragging on the ground and tripping him.  The same was true of his sleeves, and his shirttails nearly reached his knees, even if he had managed a bit of a growth spurt during the summer.  His pyjamas almost fit, but only because Dudley had been nine when he outgrew them.  They were bright green with dinosaurs on them, and had holes in the elbows.

Harry didn't care about the clothes, as they would soon be covered by Hogwart's robes anyway.  He cared a bit about the pyjamas, but decided that if any of the boys in his dorm so much as giggled in his direction while he was wearing them, he would hex them with—well, something suitably awful, anyway.  Besides, he may have dinosaur pyjamas, but he had a Firebolt.  (There was a certain logic in this viewpoint.)

He ignored most of the unpleasant things Uncle Vernon ranted at him—he had it all memorised anyway, and his body had learned when to make appropriate noncommittal noises—and concentrated on Going Back to School.  Hogwart's, where he had a real bed with feathers, where the paintings talked and ghosts roamed the hallways and there were secret passages and moving staircases and _Quidditch_.  Gryffindor would need a new team captain this year, there were spots on the team for a Keeper and a Chaser.  He wondered if Ron would try out—his best friend made a decent Keeper when they had a chance to play for fun.  Ginny wasn't bad either.  He considered the idea of a Gryffindor team made up only of himself, Angelina Johnson, and four Weasleys, and couldn't decide whether to be delighted or terrified.

Uncle Vernon, his face swollen and nearly purple with nameless rage, paused the car.  He did not really pause telling Harry how horrible and ungrateful and inconsiderate he was, but he did interrupt himself long enough to snap, "Well get out then, boy!" and Harry, wondering if he was actually going to bring the car to a complete stop, threw open the door and scrambled out, trying to carry all his things at once.  Hedwig squawked in irritation when her cage swung nearly upside-down, and he very nearly fell down right in front of a car when he tripped over the cuffs of his two-large trousers, but finally he made it to the sidewalk with his box and his owl and his broomstick, and by the time he looked back into the street, Uncle Vernon had pulled away and was nowhere in sight.

A fat raindrop fell and splatted on his glasses.  Yes, it was a truly glorious day.

****

"Harry!  Over here, Harry!"  It was Hermione, her arms loaded down with books, with Crookshanks the cat at her heels.  "Have you _seen my list?" she demanded breathlessly, as Harry made his way to her.  "I know I'll be able to read them all, but I'm not at all certain I can carry them!"  She was taller and a little curvier than she'd been at the end of the previous year, though between her robes and her books, it was hard to tell._

"Let me help," suggested Harry, peering over her list as he took some of the books from her stack.  "Anyway it's your own fault for taking so many courses."  Two years before, Hermione had taken so many subjects that she'd had to turn time back just to make it to them.  At least she'd gotten over _that.  _

He bought his books, plus a few other little things, refilled his bag of wizard gold at Gringott's, and then he and Hermione stopped for ice cream at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour.  They waved wildly when they saw the Weasleys approaching—an entire family with bright red hair, clamouring and making as much noise as possible, so that Harry and Hermione almost had to scream to get their attention.  

"Whew!  Good to see you!" Ron called, popping into a chair next to them.  

"How's the Firebolt, Harry?" Fred and George asked almost simultaneously.  Harry patted it and assured them it was fine.  

Ginny, who up til this point had barely been able to look Harry in the face and mumble, grinned hello and asked pertly, "Do I get to ride it?"

"Not til after I do," Ron said meaningfully.  Harry felt a possessive urge to cuddle his broomstick.

Conversation slid easily from topic to topic.  Harry heard about the Weasleys' eldest sons, Bill and Charlie, who were off researching exciting things in other countries.  He heard about Percy, who now that he was Working For the Ministry of Magic, had decided he was too good to do the school shopping with the rest of his family, and abandoned them in favour of his girlfriend Penelope.  He heard about Hermione's holiday to Italy with her family, who despite being Muggles, always seemed to find interesting things to do.

"Wonder who's going to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts this year?"  Hermione wondered, idly stroking Crookshanks, who curled in her lap.  "You don't suppose they've given it to Snape at last, do you?"  Professor Snape hated all three of them, and had wanted the job for a long time.  There was little chance they would enjoy or do well in another class that he taught.  Even—or especially—Defence Against the Dark Arts, at which Harry had always had a kind of innate advantage.

"Ugh, I hope not!" Ron said with a shudder.  "I think he was starting to go a little crazy, at the end of last term...."

Harry frowned.  "I don't think they would have...Dumbledore needs him to do something else, remember?"  Just saying the words reminded him of some of the less-than-cheerful aspects of the coming school year.  For one thing, his proclaimed arch-enemy Voldemort had been returned to power, and he was still after Harry's life.  Evil wizards can hold a grudge for a very long time.  

//_Hufflepuff's going to need a new captain, too._//  He had avoided thinking about it all summer.  The first casualty in the War Against Evil was Cedric Diggory, House Hufflepuff, Quidditch team captain, Tri-Wizard Champion.  Cho Chang's boyfriend.  Almost Harry's friend.

Harry felt a strange sort of twinge in the pit of his belly, and tried to go back to Not Thinking.  He had the indescribable, indefinable feeling that nothing was going to be the same as it had been before.  Not even Hogwart's.  It wasn't invigorating or inspiring.  It was sad.

For the rest of the day, he kept expecting something to go wrong.  He finished his ice cream, wandered through Diagon Alley with Ron and Hermione, made plans for the first Hogsmeade weekend, ran into Neville Longbottom and said hello to the Creevey brothers, and lost a chocolate frog when it decided to leap out of the package and into a mud puddle where he didn't feel much like retrieving it.  And all the while, the feeling of Wrongness persisted, twisting what had begun as such a promising day.

Maybe it was just the weather, Hermione suggested, when he mentioned it.  The damp dismal greyness would make anyone feel like something was wrong.  She didn't believe it even when she said it.  Neither did Harry.

And yet, despite the formless lingering fear, nothing happened.  The Hogwart's Express arrived on time at Platform 9 ¾, they made it on with all their luggage and no mishaps, and they rode the entire way without even a visit from Draco Malfoy.  Harry did see him climbing aboard—his trunk had gotten stuck on something, and he couldn't quite pull it free, though he maintained an expression of absent idleness until Vincent Crabbe, muscles bulging, seized the corner and hefted it properly aboard.  Crabbe had grown over the summer, both taller and broader.  Malfoy had not.  He was a little taller, but it actually looked as if there were less of him—he seemed paler, and his hair, no longer greased to his head, was short and downy.  It made him look young.  He caught sight of Harry and leveled a steely-eyed glare in his direction, but that was all.  He glided down the aisle of the train cars between Crabbe and Gregory Goyle (who had not grown quite so much as Crabbe) without so much as a glance in the Gryffindors' direction.

The feeling persisted, and by the time they reached Hogwart's, it had given Harry a stomachache.  It was almost worse, having nothing bad happen and knowing that eventually it would, having to _wait_ for it.  He greeted the tall pillars of Hogwart's with growing dread polluting his excitement, and he noted with a nostalgic melancholy how very young the first-years were when the Sorting Hat divided them up.  Ron was shooting him concerned looks by the time they settled into the Great Hall for the Joining Feast, though he was too tactful or else too concerned to actually say anything not directly related to classes, Hermione, or Quidditch.  

Then Professor Dumbledore made his customary speech.  He fairly bounded from his chair.  He was very old, but he didn't seem it—his energy appeared infinite, as did his power, and it was instinctive to trust and like him.  At least Harry thought so, and Professor Dumbledore had always justified that trust to Harry.

"Welcome, welcome!" he called happily.  "Another year at Hogwart's is about to begin!  And this year we've had no strange unpleasantness to start off the year!"  He did not seem to be in the least concerned about Voldemort's return, but Harry had learned, over the course of things, that just because Dumbledore didn't _look_ concerned did not necessarily mean he wasn't.  "Off on the right foot at last!" he continued.  "And as has become a bit of a tradition on its own, I should introduced to you the newest addition to the faculty.  We have a new teacher for Defence Against the Dark Arts, who I hope will last more than our last few choices have.  Allow me to introduce Professor Chant!"

A young pretty woman with blue robes and dark curls was sitting next to Hagrid at the teachers' table, at the announcement she stood up, a polite smile plastered onto her face.  Harry thought she looked a bit uncomfortable, and her reception—lukewarm at best, because the students had learned not to get too enthusiastic about Defence Against the Dark Arts professors by this point—didn't help matters.  She mumbled a thank-you and looked pleadingly at Dumbledore.

"Well then—enough of all this talk, let's get on with the feast!"  Dumbledore concluded, and sat back down.   Professor Chant sank back into her chair, where she was hidden from view behind the bulk that was Hagrid.

"Look!"  Ron squealed enthusiastically, directing Harry's attention to the food appearing in quick bursts of sound and light on the table.  "Custard!"

A real Hogwart's feast, it seemed, was the one thing able to dull the Feeling of Impending Doom, and by the time they got to the ice cream and apple crumble, it had faded entirely.

****

**Hour 1:  Transfiguration.**

"Professor?  Professor!"

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

"I was wondering, this year will we be learning about Animagi?"

A frown, and the deepening of the crow's feet around the tall woman's eyes.  "I'm afraid not, Miss Granger.  The Animagus spells are not only complicated and dangerous, but also restricted.  You'll have to settle for more mundane magic for this year."  A long, probing look at not only Hermione, but Harry and Ron as well.  "Restricted and dangerous," she repeated meaningfully.  Harry swallowed and nodded.

**Hour 2:  Divination.**

"So let's see," Harry said, trying to keep both laughter and sheer disbelief out of his voice.  "I'm going to fall out of the Gryffindor Tower window on Thursday next and crack my head open, then the following Monday it's a rogue painting with a battle-axe, and the week before Christmas I'm to contract an—an STD?  And then by February I'm being poisoned?  I should have been born a cat with nine lives, else I won't even make it through the term."

Professor Trelawney, far from being insulted, stared glassy-eyed back at him, nodding slowly.  "That may be, that may be," she said distantly.  

Harry nudged Ron, who rolled his eyes and muttered, "At least you know you'll be getting some before Christmas."

"Laugh you may," Trelawney told Ron fiercely, "but you must remember not to shower on Tuesdays."

Ron blinked.

Hour 3:  Charms Between coughing and sneezing and brushing soot from cheeks:  "Neville?" 

Sheepishly:  "Um.  Yes."

"Will you be terribly insulted if I say I never want to be your lab partner again in this life?"

A pause.  A cough, that might have had a bit of a giggle in it.  "Not really.  I think—I think maybe I'm better off with Hermione, anyway."

"Good.  Because I don't want to insult you, but I was always kind of attached to my eyebrows."

"Oh, don't worry.  Parvati can grow them back for you.  She has to help Lavender out once a week."

Hour 4:  Potions 

Ron, whining:  "Whose brilliant idea was it to have Potions right before lunch?"

Harry: "Better than right after."

Draco:  "I'm forced to agree...seeing you right after lunch would make me nauseous."

Hermione:  "It's _nauseated._  But you're right, you are nauseous."

Silence.

**Lunch.**

"I still say that house-elves—"

"Hermione, please stuff it."

A withering glare. The sounds of munching.  Talk of Quidditch.

****

Hour 5:  Defence Against the Dark Arts 

Fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins slid into desks, stacked parchment and ink and quills and copies of _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Five_ and _Dark Creatures of the British Isles_.  Their new instructor was conspicuously absent, and the room was full of the low curious buzz of students.

The door swung open at last, and Professor Chant brushed in, her pace hurried, wisps of electrostatic black hair sticking out, flyaway, around her face.  She gave them a frazzled smile and dropped a tall stack of books onto the mahogany teacher's desk at the front of the room.  "Hello...good, you've all got your books...I'm Professor Chant, for anyone who wasn't quite paying attention at the feast yesterday."  The class, as a body, mumbled a suitable greeting.  Professor Chant was slight and very pretty, with pale skin and very blue eyes, and long black hair that would have been curly had it not been for the crackles of static electricity that made it misbehave.  She looked rather young to be a teacher, but that might have just been because the students, most of them now all of fifteen years old, were getting older and bigger themselves.

"Get out a bit of parchment," she directed, without any preamble or explanation.  "Sign your name at the top, please."

Obediently, the students did, and there was much rustling of parchment and scratching of quills as an entire class scrawled their names in their most impressive handwriting.  There were tails and curlicues and fancy letters, some who wrote tiny and some whose names took up the entire width of the parchment, some who only used their initials and some (mostly from very old wizarding families with many dead relations to keep happy) who had six or seven names.  "Just rip that bit off and turn it in when you finish," Professor Chant directed, and they did, even if they were a bit confused.  

When she had collected all the names, she leaned against the front of the mahogany desk and folded her arms across her chest and asked, "Who can tell me why what you just did was extremely dangerous?"

The class looked expectantly at Hermione, who was looking distraught and leafing frantically through _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Five_.

"You won't find it in there," the professor told her, almost gently, as if she understood how Hermione hated not knowing things.  "But would anyone like to hazard a guess?"

They all looked at each other, there was a low buzz and rumble of ideas and guesses, and Draco Malfoy raised his hand.  "A signature is binding," he said, slowly as if he were still working out in his head what to say.  "So if someone has it, maybe that gives them a bit of power over you?"

"Very good," Professor Chant said, nodding.  She held the room still with fierce blue eyes.  "A signature gives power to the person who holds it.  I could take any one of your names, here, once you leave this room, and use it to find out where you are...or summon you to me, or even bind you from doing any magic."  Silence fell as this sunk in and students shifted nervously in their seats.

"So now," she continued, matter-of-fact, "you're all going to learn how to add protections to your signature so that it can't be used against you."  

A collective sigh of relief rose from the class, except for Pansy Parkinson, who said petulantly, "But you've still got all our names the old way!"

Professor Chant smiled the smile of a very wicked child who is pretending to be good.  "Of course," she said sweetly.

The class cringed.

****

By the end of the hour, Harry had written his name twenty-six and a half times.  (The half was when he ran out of ink in the middle and gave up.)  It wasn't until number twenty-four that he finally got it right, but just to make sure, he did two more for practice.  Signing one's name was not particular interesting in and of itself, even with the warding-charm Professor Chant had taught them to add to it, but her demonstrations of why it was important were rather convincing.  She would walk around the room, watching them, and sometimes test them by resting her hand on the parchment where one of the students had signed—and the next thing that student knew, they would get up and dance a jig, or their hair would turn green, or they would start chattering away and everything they said would come out in Swahili.  Harry himself had already found himself singing "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" to Millicent Bulstrode, who had laughed at the time but very shortly afterward had clambered up on top of her desk and started twirling around until she got dizzy, at which point she toppled and landed on top of Draco Malfoy, who complained for a good while afterward that he couldn't breathe properly.  Ron had braided Seamus Finnigan's hair, Hermione balanced her wand on the end of her nose, and Vincent Crabbe stood on his head in the corner until his ears turned purple.  Dean Thomas picked up Neville Longbottom and swung him onto his shoulders, and Neville had to keep clapping his hands.  It was noisy, and highly entertaining if you weren't the one being manipulated like a puppet, but most of them felt it was just safer to learn to write their name properly as quickly as possible.

"From now on," Professor Chant said, when everyone was finally seated and quiet again, "you should sign this way always.  Whenever you write a paper for a class, or send a letter home—because you never know when someone will be able to get hold of it who ought not to."

"Constant vigilance," someone—probably Dean Thomas—snorted from the back of the room.  The class giggled.

"Laugh, then," said Professor Chant mildly.  "Just do as you're told while you're laughing at it.  It's one thing to see your classmates making fools of themselves, and another thing entirely—well, you can imagine for yourselves."

There was a long moment of silence while the students imagined some of the more interesting and awful things that could happen to them.

"Now, for tomorrow," the professor said, her voice changing, calm and placid and authoritative, "you will all please read through the first three chapters of _Dark Creatures of the British Isles_ and choose one you are most interested in discussing.  Oh—and one other thing.  I'd like some volunteers for some extra credit projects throughout the term...come talk to me or slip a note into my office if you're interested."  She smiled, and her young face lit up, and quite a few boys who would not have cared about extra credit in any other class suggested that they might like to do just such a project.  "It'll be in the evenings, and sometimes very late, so don't volunteer if you can't stay awake, or have other obligations after supper."  Harry noticed Hermione fairly bouncing on her toes, waiting for Professor Chant to finish speaking so she could volunteer.

"Oh, I've just got to put my name in!  You should too, you know, both of you.  Think of the things we could learn from doing extra credit in /this/ class!"  she said under her breath.  "You especially, Harry.  Now that You-Know-Who is back and all...you're going to need all the help you can get."

"I guess so," Harry said, because he'd really been trying not to have to think about that any more than he had to, but knew she was right.  (That was the irritating thing about Hermione, and about girls in general, really.  They were right far too often, and they knew it.)  "Ron?"

"Huh?"  Ron spoke up at the sound of his name, but he'd been watching the professor with a glazed-over look on his face.  "Oh, sign up.  Right.  Sure, I will."

Hermione rolled her eyes and elbowed him.  "Boys!"

"Gilderoy Lockhart," said Ron, and Hermione blushed and stomped out of the room.  Harry and Ron chased after her.  "Herm?  I thought you were going to volunteer for extra credit."

"I'll write a note later," said Hermione, not turning around.

****

By the end of the week, Defence Against the Dark Arts was almost everyone's favourite class.  There were various reasons for this, but most of them had to do with the teacher, who was very pretty (as the boys kept saying, and the girls kept denying) and wildly unpredictable.  Unpredictability by itself was not a strange thing among the teachers of this particular class—Hogwart's had had a string of them, and from Professor Quirrel to Bartemius Crouch Jr-in-disguise-as-Mad-Eye-Moody (both of whom ended up being servants of the Dark Lord), each was a bit more odd than the last.  

The hiring qualifications apparently did not place much importance on mental stability.

What this meant, in practical student terms, is that the Defence classes were always, in some form or other, exciting.  At some point in their school careers—probably about the time Remus Lupin was teaching them about boggarts, and intensified when the Moody imposter demonstrated the Unforgivable Curses—they had realised that this was where they were going to learn the things that their parents (or the Ministry, or the school Council) did not want them to know.

And Professor Chant did not let them down.  The first day was spent signing their names, which admittedly did not sound exciting at first but became quite a challenge after the first few embarrassing things one found one's self doing.  The second day they discussed their favourite creatures from the first three chapters of their book, and it didn't seem to matter that most people had picked violent, nasty things like the Grim.  ("Actually," Professor Chant said, "I read something about the Grim in a bestiary once when I was little, and I was terrified of even looking at a black dog for years after."  Harry remembered Sirius and Trelawney and concentrated on not laughing.)

The third day they wrote essays about the things they had learned in Defence classes in previous years that they thought had been most useful and important.  Harry wrote about facing Dementors and the _Expecto Patronus_ spell.  Ron, Seamus and Crabbe wrote about Boggarts.  Parvati Patil wrote about Quirrel and Moody and how you can't trust appearances.  Draco Malfoy wrote about the Unforgivable Curses.  Hermione wrote about everything.

The fourth day, they learned about wandless magic.

Professor Chant asked if any of them had ever tried it before.  They all looked at her blankly, some shaking their heads.  Nobody spoke up.  She waited.

Finally, after what seemed like it must have taken the entire class period but had really only been six minutes, Harry remembered something, and raised his hand.

"Before I came to Hogwart's," he said, "things used to happen.  I let a snake out of a cage once by accident."

Professor Chant looked thoughtful.  "And that was before you knew about magic at all, isn't it?"  Harry nodded.  "What about the rest of you?  Anything else ever make things happen without understanding why?"

A few other students, mostly Muggle-born, tentatively raised their hands, murmuring that yes, they had, they just hadn't known what was going on at the time, and it had been rather embarrassing really, and by now they'd just forgotten.  Several of the Slytherins just looked superior, because of course as purebloods from old wizard families, they had never bothered to consider a life without understanding magic.

Professor Chant held up her wand—holly, eleven inches—and pointed it toward the ceiling.  "Several of you," she said, "don't really need these at all."

The class became very quiet.

"They're useful for a few reasons," she continued.  "It's easier to focus your magic on a smaller point—not literally, mind, but figuratively, on a _purpose_—if you use a wand.  And at the same time, it acts as an amplifier."  She flicked the tip of her wand toward the chalkboard, and a diagram appeared.  Hermione bent her head to copy it onto her parchment at once.  "See—all this vague, formless, magic floating around is directed by the wizard into the wand.  Aim and fire—and it's not vague and formless anymore, but purposeful and stronger than it looked before."  Bright blue eyes scanned the classroom for signs of comprehension.  "You all know about levels of wizardry, right?  Warlocks and enchanters and such?"

The class started back, blankly.  "You mean levels, like O.W.L.s?" Pansy Parkinson ventured tentatively. 

Professor Chant shook her head.  "No, but thank you for guessing, at least.  I mean levels of ability.  Of innate magical power.  Or do they teach you everybody's got the same potential, here?"  The looks from the students said quite plainly that yes, they did, and someone who was quite close to the professor might have heard her mutter something under her breath about the political correctness of the school system.

"Well, everybody's /not/ the same," she said flatly.  "Some of you are more powerful wizards than others, and always will be.  I know it's not what you want to hear, and that you've probably suspected it for a long time anyway.  But it's important that you understand it.  Because being successful at magic is about how you use the power you have.  Even the most powerful enchanter in the world can get into trouble by not paying attention, and anyone with even a little power can do great things with it by applying it properly.  And I'd rather have you all being creative and clever in the application rather than just blowing big holes in the sky."

Interest had kindled in most of the stares now, and a good many students were fingering their wands and hoping, hoping that they were the ones with more power, and not less.  The ones who weren't were Harry and Malfoy, who both knew they had magic to spare, and Neville, who was equally sure he didn't.

"There used to be classifications of wizards by ability," Professor Chant explained, "though they're officially not used anymore except in really private records—your school records, and Ministry ones, if any of you are unfortunate enough to be kept on file there."  Some awkward but very real tittering.  "They range from witch or warlock—those with just a little magic—to enchanters, who have a great deal.  You don't have to know them all, and we won't be using them."  Relieved sighs.  "But back to wands.  Witches or warlocks need wands to collect their power and amplify it.  Enchanters need wands to focus, and keep things from happening that they don't mean.  But anyone can do magic without a wand if they need to."

Her face grew serious suddenly, her blue eyes darkening, a little sad.  "You probably all know, whether you're supposed to or not," she said abruptly, "that the Dark Lord has returned to the world.  That, my dears, means that there is a very good chance that some of you here—" and she didn't look right at Harry then, but everyone else did— "are going to need, at some point, to defend yourselves.  And evil wizards don't play fair.  If you get into a fix, it won't be just after breakfast when you've got your wand and your spellbooks and are feeling like you could take on the world.  It's going to be when you're the most defenceless, when you look like you couldn't fight off a bug."

"And /that/," she finished defiantly, fiercely, "is when you will prove that evil wizard wrong.  You aren't to go looking for trouble—that's just stupid—but in this class we're going to bloody well make sure you're able to get out of it if it finds you."

The class was not entirely sure how to react to this pronouncement.  There was scattered clapping, a little giggling from the back row of Slytherin girls, and Dean Thomas whistled loudly between his fingers.  Professor Chant grinned a bit sheepishly.

"That will be all.  Homework is to complete one small, _simple_ spell without the use of your wand before class tomorrow, and be ready to talk about it.  And quite possibly demonstrate it again," she added with a meaningful look at several of the boys, who quite suddenly started adjusting their plans for what spells they would attempt.  "And would Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy kindly come have a word with me before leaving the room.  Class dismissed."

Blinking in surprise, Harry gathered up his books, told Ron and Hermione he'd meet them out in the hall, and waited for the rest of the class to leave, all without looking at Malfoy, who was doing the same thing on the other side of the room.  Finally, when only the two of them and Professor Chant were left in the room, they walked purposefully up to her desk, still studiously avoiding actually looking at each other.

"You wanted to see me, Professor?" Malfoy said stiffly, in a tone Harry recognised as the one normally reserved for Professor Snape.

"Both of you, really," said Chant dryly.  "You volunteered for an extra project, if you haven't forgotten, and I'd like the two of you to meet me tonight.  After supper, in my office."

Harry and Malfoy forgot about ignoring each other and exchanged a look of abject horror.  "The two of us?" they began, almost simultaneously.  "_Together_?"

The glare she fixed on them was cold, authoritarian, and just a little bit amused.  "Yes," she repeated, "together.  And yes, I'm aware you don't like each other.  You're going to learn to work together anyway."  The amusement grew and glinted and pulled the corners of her lips upward.  "I expect you to be civil and helpful to each other for as long as we're working.  After that, I don't care, and you can tell your friends any tale you please.  Agreed?"

As pleasant as she sounded, they both had a feeling they were not actually being given a choice.  They nodded, and said "Yes, Professor," and hurried out the classroom door.  They'd gone back to not looking at each other.  Outside, Ron and Hermione were waiting for Harry one side of the hall, and Crabbe and Goyle were waiting for Malfoy on the other.  There was not so much as an exchange of unpleasantries when they split up and went their separate ways.

"What was that about?" Ron asked.

"Extra credit project," said Harry.

Ron looked disgusted.  "With /Malfoy/?"  Harry just nodded.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said, sympathetic.  "What are you going to be doing?"

"I'm not sure," Harry answered, deciding it was finally safe to sneak a glance over his shoulder at the Slytherins' departing backs.  They were apparently having a conversation very similar to this one.  "We're supposed to meet up after supper and she'll tell us what to do from there."

"Still," said Ron, trying to be encouraging, "you get in extra hours with Chant.  At night, no less, and you're practically going to be alone together."

Harry—who agreed that Chant was pretty, but thought having actual crushes on teachers was really a bit pointless—gave Ron a strange look.  Hermione sighed, and swatted him with her notebook.

****

[to be continued in _Extra Credit, part ii_, in which Harry learns more about wandless magic. And Draco.  And Professor Chant.  And Hagrid.  And there is consuming of tea and very bad cake.]


End file.
